As the sun began to make its way over the horizon in the far-off hills, I took my cloak and woke up Raleen, "Hey, time to go." she rubbed her eyes and yawned, "Alright, quit yer yapping, I'm going." We packed up and kept on our way, "Say I've been meaning to ask," I said walking alongside her, "What is it?" "Well, the thing is, we've been walking through for a while now, how exactly do you know it's in the area we're going to?" "Well, if you must know before I asked for your help, I managed to track it to the very location we're headed, I've spotted it there for weeks to make sure it stayed there whenever I was ready to get it and take it down. Plus when I got a closer look I got to see how big it was." "How big was it?" "Oh, you'll see." Those words scared me more than I would ever know.
We hiked and climbed over hills and into the snow-covered plains, about an hour past midday, gentle snow began to fall, though beautiful and serene this was likely not a good sign, winter in Ulvenguard isn't always too well-received, sure we had holidays and an excuse to stay inside to avoid the deadly cold and such, but it also meant harder prey to hunt, lakes and rivers freezing up which meant a limited supply of fish and so on. That, and gentle snowfalls and almost always lead to harsh blizzards in a matter of hours. Thankfully Raleen knew this and planned ahead of time and said that about an hour and a half away was a small empty cave, she said it was big enough for at least three adult humans and small enough that no larger animals would seek shelter there. As quickly as we could we made our way towards this cave. The wind started to pick up and the snow began to fall a lot faster. The tips of my fingers began to feel numb, and I could barely feel my face as we went over a small hill, "Over here!" Raleen shouted pointing to the cave, yet I couldn't see it. The blizzard started getting worse and so intense I could hardly see past all the white snow and cold wind blowing across my face, suddenly I felt a hand grab mine and lead me into the cave, once inside Raleen took out some of the spare firewood we had leftover from when we first made camp and immediately started a fire.
She pushed me closer to the fire to warm back up. "There you go ya daft bloke." There wasn't much wind coming into the cave thankfully, "Nearly lost you there, sort of...you doing any better." Through chattering teeth, I did my best to respond, "Y-yeah….a little bit." "I hate the bloody cold, hate the bloody winter too. I swear spring and summer are the only tolerable seasons here." "That's true….though we do have some great holidays during the winter." "Yeah like, what?" she said adding some more kindling, "Well, there's mead fest, the day of the Wolf King, Allfathers day, and the Midwinter feast." "You go to the midwinter feast?" she asked, taking a bite of a dried piece of meat, "well yeah, me and the queen are good friends since childhood. Do you not go? There's no reservation or anything like that, everyone is more than welcome to join." Raleen stared into the fire, "I doubt they'd want some goblin eating all the food like some wild boar." I chuckled, "Oh trust me, you wouldn't be the only one, I've seen plenty of men, elves, dwarfs eat like malnourished wolves. Hells, I've seen some of the more "sophisticated" men and women eat like no one has fed them in years." Raleen laughed, "Is it as fun as they say?" "Yeah, it has been for a while." As I looked back into the fire I remembered something that I forgot I packed.
I rummaged through my pack and managed to find it, an unopened, room temperature bottle of rum, "Thank the Allfathers I didn't forget about this." Raleen gave me a confused look, "What the bloody hell is that?" "This my dear goblin friend is a bottle of Ulfguardian rum, you remember the saying right? Drink Ulfguardian mead when you're having fun, but when winter comes it's best to drink Ulfguardian rum." I said as I opened the bottle and took a long drink from it. The burning sensation I felt going in through my chest had already felt much warmer internally, "My goodness, it's like a bonfire in my chest." I handed the bottle over to Raleen, she inspected the bottle and took a quick drink, she nearly choked as she passed it back, "Bloody fuckin' hell, is this what dragons feel like you reckon?" "Doubt if I know, I nearly came into contact with a few of them in my time and I didn't want to risk it, the gold, however, was extremely tempting." "How come?" "Oh, nothing special, I just have a massive debt to pay off every couple of months, my father took years trying to pay off the original debt, but when Ulvenguard went to war, we had to leave and head to the black islands...a month later news came that the war was over….but my mother was among the dead, it nearly destroyed my father emotionally, years later my brother betrayed him and blamed his death on me….since then I've been taking jobs here and there following somewhat in my father's footsteps to pay off that same damn debt, thankfully I still have enough for myself." As we kept passing the bottle back and forth, Raleen decided to give her piece on her situation.
She took a quick swig before speaking, "even though I'd rather not go back, I still somewhat miss my family. The main reason I left was that I didn't want to be another feral goblin in their little hidey-hole, I didn't want to be another one of those goblins that end up looking clapped as all nine hells because they've become deformed and animalistic from being in the ground for so damn long." I took one last swig before putting the bottle back in the bag, "I guess I can understand that. In all honesty, you're not that bad looking Raleen, you're kinda cute." I couldn't tell if she was blushing from being drunk, from the cold, or because I called her cute but, it was obvious there was some blood rushing to her face, and it might have been from the exhaustion of having to endure a tad bit of a blizzard or the alcohol was hitting my system finally, but I could have sworn I saw her ears begin to flap. It was starting to get dark outside the cave so we decided that it was best to spend the night inside to avoid having to travel in ice-cold weather in pitch-black darkness.
I woke up to Raleen shaking me awake to get a move on with our hunt, from the looks of things, there had been at least a foot and a half that had fallen. I trekked our way through all the snow when we finally made it to a large clearing in between two large hills and surrounded by snow-covered trees. Raleen pointed to an area where we could hide and wait, "We'll wait there, I spent three days here watching the thing, it always comes back to this spot, once we spot it we spring into action and we take it out quickly cause if it ain't dead the first time, it sure as all nine hells will be mad. I didn't ask questions and hid where she told me to hide. And we waited there for 10 minutes. Then 15, 30 minutes. Then an hour, an hour and a half. Eventually, we laid on our stomachs in the cold for nearly three hours. That was when we finally heard a noise coming from the bushes. If I had not been there, I wouldn't have believed it myself, but this caribou was massive. It stood an intimidating 20 feet tall, its fur was as white as the snow surrounding it, and its antlers were as large as they were sharp.
I looked at Raleen, "You sure we can take this thing?" "You bet your arse." "No I mean are you sure we can carry the damn thing back." "Well, that's why I have you innit?" "I can't carry a possible 700-pound beast like that. That thing is massive It'd take a week and a half to get it past the plains, then another one to get t over the hills." "Oh don't exaggerate, besides I got some wood, some rope, and some other stuff to make ourselves a sled to make it easier to carry." I wanted to continue to fight this point but she put her on my lips to keep me quiet as this massive animal approached us, "Shh...that's it….come to momma…." she said as she placed her finger on the trigger of the crossbow, I put a hand on one of my daggers and sat there, the anxiety of waiting for her to pull the trigger starting to weigh on me. Then, as it got closer I heard Raeleen say, "Gotcha." and pulled the trigger shooting the bolt deep into the animal's shoulder.
The beast let out a painful and angry screeching bellow. It started to buck around and kick into the air, "Distract it while I reload!" I heard Raleen say, I ran out of the bushes and made as much noise and movement as possible, it seemed to be more angry than hurt so it lowered its head and was ready to charge at me, "Oh crap." I said as I watched it power towards me, I could never describe the fear that held me in place that day, I didn't know if it was the size of the antlers edging closer and closer to my body, the idea that this might have been my end or the fact I passed out in time to avoid getting skewered by a massive caribou. However, it did hit a tree which allowed Raleen enough time to finish reloading and land the killing blow. When she shook me I woke up with a panic, wondering if it did manage to kill me in the end, luckily seeing Raleen's face managed to calm me down enough to get my bearings, "Well then," she said putting her crossbow away, "Let's get to building a big enough sled shall we?" At this point, I'd rather spend more time in the cold than wondering whether or not I might have died because of a wild animal. So I got some wood carving tools that she had in her bag and got to work on making a big enough sled to carry this damn thing.